Wabi and Sabi: The Aesthetics of Solitude

Nearly all the arts in historical China and Japan derive their aesthetic
principles from Taoism and Zen Buddhism. The two great philosophical traditions
proved compatible specifically with the culture and psychology of Japan. The hallmark of a Chinese or Japanese masterpiece free of modern
influence continues to be the naturalness and uncontrived, even "accidental"
appearance of the work. The artist works with and harmonizes nature and its
universal accidents. The guiding principles are wabi and sabi.

Wabi

The two dominant principles of Chinese and Japanese art and culture are
wabi and sabi. Wabi refers to a philosophical construct, a
sense of space, direction, or path, while sabi is an aesthetic construct rooted in
a given object and its features, plus the occupation of time, chronology, and objectivity.
Though the terms are and should be referred to distinctly, they are usually
combined as wabi-sabi, as both a working description and as a single aesthetic
principle.

The original connotation of wabi is based on the aloneness or separation
from society experienced by the hermit, suggesting to the popular mind a misery
and sad forlornness. Only by the fourteenth century in Japan were positive
attributes ascribed to wabi and cultivated. As Koren1 puts it,

The self-imposed isolation and voluntary poverty of the hermit and ascetic
came to be considered opportunities for spiritual richness.

Indeed, wabi is literally poverty, but it came to refer not
to the absence of material possessions but to the non-dependence upon
material possessions. Wabi is a divestment of the material that surpasses
material wealth. Wabi is simplicity that has shaken off the material in
order to relate directly with nature and reality. This absence of dependence
also frees itself from indulgence, ornateness, and pomposity. Wabi is quiet
contentment with simple things.

In short, wabi is a way of life or spiritual path. It precedes the application
of aesthetic principles applied to objects and arts, the latter being sabi. The
Zen principles informing wabi enjoyed a rich confluence of Confucian, Taoist,
Buddhism, and Shinto traditions, but focused on the hermit's insight and the
reasons why the hermit came to pursue eremiticism. These philosophical insights
are familiar: the recognition of duality as illusion, the clinging to ego and
the material world as leading to suffering, the fear of death precluding a
fulfilling life, the appreciation of life's evanescence as a prompt to living in
harmony with nature.

The life of the hermit came to be called wabizumai in Japan, essentially
"the life of wabi," a life of solitude and simplicity.

Although several fifteenth and sixteenth century figures in Japan stand out
in making the transition from wabi to sabi (Shuko, Rikyu, Ikkyu), the process
was an organic one already occurring among poets and artisans. The tea ceremony
was the first "contrived" expression of sabi, meaning that the wabi principles
would be embodied in specific objects and actions.

Sabi

Sabi as the outward expression of aesthetic values is built upon the
metaphysical and spiritual principles of Zen, but translates these values
into artistic and material qualities. Sabi suggest natural processes
resulting in objects that are irregular, unpretentious, and ambiguous. The
objects reflect a universal flux of "coming from" and "returning to." They
reflect an impermanence that is nevertheless congenial and provocative,
leading the viewer or listener to a reflectiveness and contemplation that
returns to wabi and back again to sabi, an aesthetic experience intended to
engender a holistic perspective that is peaceful and transcendent.

Sabi objects are irregular in being asymmetrical, unpretentious in being the
holistic fruit of wabizumai, ambiguous in preferring insight and intuition,
the engendering of refined spiritualized emotions rather than reason and
logic. Ambiguity allows each viewer to proceed to their capacity for
nuances without excluding anyone or exhausting the number and quality of experiences.

The Japanese haiku poet Basho transformed the wabizumai he experienced into
sabi poetry, and the melancholy of nature became a kind of longing for
the absolute. But this longing never fulfilled -- the "absolute" is not part
of Zen vocabulary --makes the tension between wabi and sabi an enriching and inexhaustible experience.

Sabi is literally solitude or even loneliness. This is the atmosphere
created by poetry and music, the sensibility provoked by art and drama, the
reflectiveness provoked by a landscape. The design principles of sabi were
applied to the spectrum of Japanese cultural expressions, including gardens
(Zen and tea), poetry, ceramics, calligraphy, tea ceremony, flower
arranging, bonsai, archery, music, and theater.

The confluence of wabi and sabi led to using the two separate terms as one.

Wabi-sabi

Here are two passages from Juniper2 that summarize wabi-sabi:

The term wabi-sabi suggests such qualities as impermanence, humility,
asymmetry, and imperfection. These underlying principles are diametrically
opposed to those of their Western counterparts, whose values are rooted in
the Hellenic worldview that values permanence, grandeur, symmetry, and
perfection. ...

Wabi-sabi is an intuitive appreciation of a transient beauty in the physical
world that reflects the irreversible flow of life in the spiritual world. It
is an understated beauty that exists in the modest, rustic, imperfect, or
even decayed, an aesthetic sensibility that finds a melancholic beauty in
the impermanence of all things.

The contrast to Western principles of aesthetics is rooted in the contrast
to Western philosophical premises of power, authority, dominance,
engagement, and control, whether of others or of nature. The art produced by
such a culture is a visual and tactile expression of its values. The two
cannot be separated. Nor, on the other hand, are wabi and sabi usually
separated in wabi-sabi art.

The design principles of wabi-sabi fall into several categories; of course
fine arts like poetry, drama, and literature, have not physical objects, embody
these principles in a different way:

type

form

texture

beauty

color

simplicity

space

balance

sobriety

TYPE
The materials used are organic, not synthetic. They are further not to be
polished or cleaned or adulterated to appear new or contrived. Hence wood,
metal, paper, textiles, stone, and clay comprise acceptable materials which
will express the passage of time and whose devolution is expressive and
attractive.

FORM
The object is shaped naturally or organically, showing natural or intentional
asymmetry or irregularity. Form is not imposed by human contrivance but subtly
intervenes to make the object follow the capabilities and relevant physical
characteristics, properties, and propensities of its own nature. This
naturalness of form is probably the first and most striking characteristic of
the object. Above all, the work is itself, not a symbol of anything.

TEXTURE
In keeping with the material used, the texture remains rough, uneven,
variegated, and random, with every appearance of pursuing an unimpeded
natural process.

BEAUTY
The Western standard of beauty referred to above does not find a place in
wabi-sabi. Not even conventional standards of beauty in the popular mind
unfamiliar with theory are necessarily wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi presses the absolute nature of permeability in the
visual and sensual, so that the fragility and poignancy of conventional beauty
lost in the passage of time is made real in the present space. The
object reveals this different sense of beauty in subtle and even barely
perceptible detail, but it is a holistic experience that is difficult for the
viewer to abstract given details that convey the given sensibility.

Indeed, the wabi-sabi artist does not intend the viewer to "abstract" anything. Wabi-sabi is a holistic experience, and objects derive their beauty from the
emotion conveyed, not from any particular detail of the work. In this latter
sense, beauty is more easily conveyed in the experience of literature,
theater, or ceremony than are some of the other principles.

To be alone
It is a color that
cannot be named:
This mountain where cedars rise
Into the autumn dusk

SIMPLICITY
Simplicity conveys the spontaneity of natural materials that are not or cannot be embellished. Lack of adulteration and ostentation confirms the authenticity of the work and its conformity to the wabi-sabi
spirit.

SPACE
While sabi works are the objectification of wabi in space, here space refers
to proportion and perspective. Nothing is wasted yet there is ample space
around the object, conveying a holistic philosophy wherein all elements
intertwine and are essential to the whole. Scale becomes an economy of space
(the tea hut, bonsai), but empty space conveys the nature of the universe (the
bowl or cup, archery, the Zen garden).

BALANCE
The work reflects the physical balances found in the natural world. Hence no
preconceived formula for symmetry is tenable because nature defines itself by
circumstances: a tree grows tall or short, thin or thick, leafy, crooked, etc.,
in the context of other trees, rocks, water, soil, hummus, etc. in the forest.
This balance as circumstance is a design principle for the artist to infuse
into a work. The work, like the tree, is unique. The regularity, uniformity,
and prescriptions contrived by the artist are secondary to the requirement to
reflect a natural and unforced appearance to the object and its context.

SOBRIETY
Sobriety is the simple principle that art is sometimes better defined by what
is left out than by what is put in. Sobriety adds a sense of perspective to
the experience of impermanence. The artist approaches creative work with
humility, sincerity, and a clarification of motives. Bad motives poison art
and inevitably reveal themselves in the work. The artist must proceed to
create freely and intimately a personal and vulnerable work that is naturally
infused with the spirit of wabi-sabi. Sobriety provides the element of
ambiguity because the artist recognizes his/her limitations, and refrains from
making bold or emphatic statements.

Koren finds it especially useful to distinguish wabi-sabi principles from principles of
modernist art, the minimalism of the latter being often confused with wabi-sabi.
He comes to his subject from the discouraging experience of
witnessing wabi-sabi increasingly abandoned in Japan for the headlong embrace of
Western pop art and technology. Koren's chart (here edited) makes useful
distinctions between the minimalism of contemporary modernism and the principles
of wabi-sabi that further elucidate the design principles of wabi-sabi.

MODERNISM

WABI-SABI

public

private

logical, rational

intuitive

absolute

relative

prototypical

idiosyncratic

modular

variable

progressive

cyclical

control of nature

harmony with nature

technology

nature

adaptation to machines

adaptation to nature

symmetrical

organic

rectangular

curved

man-made

natural

slick, polished, smooth

crude, rough, tactile

maintenance

degradability

reduction/subjugation of senses

expansion of senses

clarity

ambiguity

functionality, utility

naturalness

materiality

non-materiality

all-weather

seasonal

light, bright

dark, dim

cool

warm

But perhaps the best expression of the aesthetic principles of wabi-sabi
come from a practitioner, in this case a practitioner of bonsai, Peter Chan3, who
distills several essential principles from the many theoretical considerations.

Seven Aesthetic Principles

Chan's aesthetic principles are seven. The three core principles are
simplicity, tranquility, and naturalness.

Simplicity is application of the minimum and the appropriate. No more than
these is ever needed, yet a profundity of aesthetic experience results.
Tranquility suggests the quality of feeling refreshed and touched within, but
with solace and calm, not excitement or over-stimulation. Naturalness is the
avoidance of contrivance. The artist attempts to make the artwork appear to have
always been part of nature, as if no human intervention ever took place. The
object (a garden, a path, even a fence) seems to have been a propitious result
of natural accidents.

From wabi come two core principles: non-attachment and subtle profundity.

Non-attachment gives the work its fresh and original feeling. The object is
somehow familiar but does not depend on anything else. Subtle profundity is
the notion of depth. Chan calls it the "intimation of inexhaustibility." The
term inexhaustibility is better than Wordsworth's "immortality," for here
the object resounds within us and itself with endless possibilities and
nuances, at once hidden and successively revealed.

From sabi come two core principles: austere sublimity and asymmetry.

Asymmetry rejects symmetry in form and balance in order to conform to
nature. It is a balance of object against space, of place and proportion. As
noted, this is the opposite of historically Western aesthetics, where
painting, music, and poetry all conform to an almost mathematical
prescription for symmetry. Austere sublimity reduces the object and its
context to the essential. All non-essentials burden the viewer and interfere
with the aesthetic experience, so that the object, now bereft of the
superfluous, conveys the sublime. This is minimalism of a sort but not
modernism by any means. Austere sublimity maintains a strong emotive
element.

Here is Chan's graphic illustrating the relationships of the aesthetic
principles:

Summary

Of course, aesthetic principles remain abstractions if not
applied to our lives as much as to art. This application can be made in pursuing the various arts
and crafts or creating the elements of our daily environment. While aesthetics
may move us to change our relationships to material objects in our daily lives,
they should provide essential insight into our culture. The principle of
simplicity, organic sources and harmony with nature have practical application
for a philosophy of life and for what may be called a philosophy of solitude,
a politics of simplicity, or even a politics of eremitism. As Juniper concludes,

Wabi-sabi, as a tool for contemplation and a philosophy of life, may now
have an unforeseen relevance as an antidote to the rampant unraveling of the
very social fabric which has held [us] together for so long. Its tenets of
modesty and simplicity encourage a disciplined unity while
discouraging overindulgence in the physical world. It gently promotes a life of
quiet contemplation and a gentle aesthetic principle that underscores a
meditative approach. Wabi-sabi demotes the role of the intellect and promotes an
intuitive feel for life where relationships between people and their
environments should be harmonious. By embodying the spirit to remind itself of
its own mortality, it can elevate the quality of human life in a world that is
fast losing its spirituality.